A little black box in wastewater Oz

Monday

Dec 30, 2013 at 2:00 AMJan 6, 2014 at 2:15 AM

Recently, I decided to attend one of the Cape Cod Commission's Section 208 water-quality outreach meetings at Orleans Town Hall — Cape Cod's current official "ground zero" in the ongoing wastewater drama series.

COURTNEY GAVIN

Recently, I decided to attend one of the Cape Cod Commission's Section 208 water-quality outreach meetings at Orleans Town Hall — Cape Cod's current official "ground zero" in the ongoing wastewater drama series.

And, true to form, the usual cast of characters was present.

On the one hand was the chamber of commerce crowd, cheering on the possibility of a town of barely 6,000 full-time residents to take on a $200 million sewer project that will likely remove at most 25 percent of the nitrogen getting into one of its most prized water bodies — Town Cove.

On the other side, you have the science-based folks wanting to explore all possible options to reduce cost and improve nitrogen removal efficiency — yours truly being in the latter camp.

The third party well-represented at our little shindig was the state Department of Environmental Protection. Its primary function was to operate the little black box affectionately known as the Linked Model computer program — a little piece of "proprietary software" that's supposed to tell all of us what's best for us.

And, of course, we have representatives of the Cape Cod Commission filling in as our meeting hosts — effortlessly guiding the little black box in true Wizard of Oz fashion.

And just as we approach the end of the session where everything in Oz Land is moving along predictably, with the occasional jousting back and forth, along comes yours truly piloting the Enola Gay on its fateful mission, dutifully dropping The Bomb on the latest installment of Cape Cod's Sewer Chronicle series by bringing up a little scientific history.

You see, not all is well in Oz Land. It appears the curtain is coming down on its official, self-anointed Wastewater Wizard, the Cape Cod Commission. And one of Cape Cod's most studied and celebrated water bodies is playing a starring role.

Back in 1982, a landmark nitrogen study of Town Cove was conducted by none other than the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It clearly concluded that Town Cove was a "flood tide estuary" whose nitrogen levels have been building up naturally for centuries, reaching the saturation point. It essentially stated that the ocean tide had been filling it up with organic sediment to the tune of 80 to 160 pounds of nitrogen per day, and that town sewers would have limited effect on it — less than 20 percent improvement for a water body that was already nitrogen-saturated.

Now, fast-forward 25 years. The state of Massachusetts, recognizing its Title 5 septic regulations are like a 2.5-ton '73 Lincoln Continental driving around in the age of the Prius, decides it has to do something about towns like Eastham, where drinking water wells on quarter-acre lots have been sitting perilously close to septic systems. Ah, what to do ... what to do?

So with the help of a couple state agencies (the DEP and the University of Massachusetts), they decide to create the "little black box." Unfortunately, it seems they forgot to tell the little black box that nitrogen at Town Cove is coming in from the ocean, because the little black box's Official Report on Town Cove didn't mention anything about significant ocean-based nitrogen sources.

So the science crowd at the aforementioned Section 208 meeting begins to ask questions about how the little black box knows about all this stuff — or, more aptly put, doesn't know. And, as expected, our gracious Cape Cod Commission hosts and the DEP folks tell us they can't reveal how the little black box works — that's "proprietary" followed by the predictable request to take this discussion offline.

Perhaps someone forgot to tell Cape Cod's Wastewater Wizard of Oz that the folks asking the questions were the ones who have been paying to keep the Wizard's lights at on at Oz central, and that they had already paid for the "intellectual" property rights to the "little black box."